Bidspirit auction | Dutch 'Jood' Star of David

Dutch 'Jood' Star of David Cloth Badge - Holocaust Era - A yellow cloth Star of David badge printed with the word 'Jood' (Dutch for 'Jew') in black pseudo-Hebraic lettering, used to identify Jewish citizens in the German-occupied Netherlands during WWII. The star is machine-stitched from yellow fabric with black outlined triangles forming the six-pointed star. Small holes are consistent with having been sewn onto a garment and later removed.From May 1942, German occupation authorities in the Netherlands required all Jewish residents over the age of six to wear this yellow star sewn visibly on outer clothing, part of a broader system of registration and marking that preceded mass deportations to transit camps such as Westerbork and onward to Auschwitz and Sobibor. The badge served to publicly isolate and stigmatise Jewish citizens, facilitating their identification for arrest and deportation by German and Dutch collaborationist authorities. Of the roughly 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands before the war, the great majority were murdered in the Holocaust, giving the country one of the highest Jewish death rates in occupied Western Europe. Such badges survive today as tangible relics of this persecution and are held in museums and collections as testimony to the Holocaust in the Netherlands.